“We want straight people reading this article to understand that the liberation of LGBTQ etc. people is not just about some ‘others,’ but is about their lives too. It is about expanding the realm of freedom and possibility that they live in along with us.
“We’re not trying to carve out a little spaces of tolerance in existing society. We’re trying to overthrow the existing society and create a new one, because the same existing society that is crushing queer people as queer people is crushing just about everyone else, and the planet to boot! This is the same society that is perpetuating imperialist war after imperialist war, or locking people up by the millions!”
The following interview conducted with several participants in the Kasama project and the Voice Collective who have been active in queer politics within Louisiana.
The interview was conducted by a reporter for a university newspaper in Louisiana. It focused on the efforts repeal of the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). DOMA is a federal law which seeks to legally limit marriage and the rights associated with marriage to couples made up of one man and one woman. The attempt to repeal that bill is, therefore, an effort to advance the legalization of marriage between same-sex couples.
This Kasama site has recently been accused by the Revolutionary Communist Party of setting up their members and leadership for state repression.
The RCP’s recent statement is called “Outright Piggery from the Camp of Counter-Revolution” — so their charge is right in the title.
Extreme accusations demand a response.
Here it is: These claims are utterly false. The RCP does not give examples, evidence or proof of their accusation because they have none.
* * * * * * * * *
Here is their central charge:
“Specifically, including very recently, there has been a whole practice of naming individuals who are identified on the Kasama site as being connected to the RCP, and then encouraging people to try to find out about individuals, their relationship to the Party, and speculation about the composition of different bodies and membership in the Party. And there has been an ongoing campaign of posting ad hominem (personal) attacks on Bob Avakian in particular. This alone puts it in the same camp as reactionary and vicious right-wing blogs and websites, doing the work for government agencies whose mission is to collect this kind of information which is then used to destroy individuals and organizations they deem to be a threat.”
In fact: Kasama has published politicalcriticisms of the RCP. If that has been damaging to the RCP it is because their politics are self-isolating and unattractive.However Kasama discussion has never breached the security of any organizations.
The following interview is with Kassie Hartendorp (Wellington Workers Party branch organiser and Schools Out facilitator and chair of Queer Avengers).
And Jason Frock (Wellington Workers Party branch education officer, Schools Out facilitator, and trainee-coordinator of the Wellington Gay Welfare Group and member of the Queer Avengers). Both have been in highly involved in the recent Queer the Night demonstration and in the formation of the Queer Avengers campaign organisation.
Tbe interview first appeared in The Spark, the newspaper of the Workers Party of New Zealand.
The Spark: What was Queer the Night?
KH: Queer the Night was a march organised in response to the day-to-day violence that members of the queer community face while in the streets. The fear of verbal insults and physical attacks is something queers constantly carry with them everywhere.
JF: The streets are especially dangerous places for queers. Twice as much near bars at night which are highly sexualised areas where concepts of ‘masculinity’ need to be protected. They are often impossible to pass without having aninsulthurled your way if you’re visibly gay. It was also becoming normalised in Wellington to have regular queer bashings. Within our own friend networks it was becoming roughly 1 every other month.
We continue to receive contributions by people hoping to understand and sum up the anti-gay policies of the RCP.
What stands out about Pat’s comment (reposted below) is that s/he directly participated in the pressuring of a young gay revolutionary.
“…I was part of series of discussions with a potential recruit from the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade (RCYB) who was gay. The descriptions given by Libri and others are similar to what we did with this youth who came out while in the brigade.
“At the time my thinking was that it was our responsibility to publicly uphold the party’s line even if we didn’t personally agree with it.
“I deeply regret being part of this and the damage it caused a very impressionable and somewhat immature high schooler.”
Pat wants to discuss the kind of training and thinking that led to such actions. And, at the same time, Pat remains a supporter of the RCP and expresses belief in that organization’s continuing viability and capacity to correct itself.
This originally appeared as a comment on a longer thread.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
by Pat
Like Sylvanus Windrunner I am also posting with trepidation. As a former member of the party I still support the party and view it as the only viable force for revolution in our country. My contact with them currently is limited but I left on good terms and want to keep it that way.
At the same time I think I do need to weigh in on the discussion because I was part of series of discussions with a potential recruit from the YB who was gay. The descriptions given by Libri and others are similar to what we did with this youth who came out while in the brigade.
One of the most remarkable events on Kasama this summer has been the outpouring of discussion over the treatment of gay people in the previous communist movement.
Libri Devrim, opened the door, with her piece “My life in a red closet” – a heartfelt remembrance written with deliberate restraint.
We experienced two responses, very different in kind:
Response #1: Rushing through the open door
There was a heartening outpouring of interest, experience and discussion. Kasama published six different, unsolicited new posts.
Three of them detailed experiences with the RCP’s red closet:
Kasama gives space to critical and even hostile remarks, and rarely dwells on praise. Consider this an exception.
This week we have been focused on excavating a particular and painful history: bigotry aimed at gay people within the revolutionary movement, its justifications, its policies and impact. It is gratifying to see evidence that our collective effort is being understood and appreciated — in this case from afar, by someone outside the organized left.
The following is excerpted from an essay originally published by The Cahokian.
One factual note: Ish described several people as “former RCP members” — when they have, in fact, been members of the organization’s youth group and supporters. Such mistakes are easy to make, but the distinctions are nonetheless important. Some of the commentators on our threads spoke as former members, but not the ones writing the main posts. We have corrected this in the excerpt we reprint below.
* * * * * * *
“This discussion is amazing to me. I can’t imagine the left as I knew it being so daring or honest with itself: and it’s done with the intention of being constructive and healing.”
“While I often find much to disagree with, I give them full credit for daring to look backwards as well as forward.”
Kasama: Coming to Terms with a Legacy of Homophobia
by the Cahokian (aka “ish”)
I’ve been following a number of left-wing websites which strike me as attempting to re-grow a meaningful left. The most exciting part of this to me is that following the obvious failure or defeat of the left in the last century, the people engaged in this attempt are going over the dogma of the past and trying to find what to hang on to and what to discard.
“We make the following rightful and righteous demands:
1. that the Marxist-Leninist methodology of dialectical and historical materialism be applied to the gay question and that subjectivist, “natural” bourgeois ideas based on no investigation be cast aside;
2. that serious criticism/self-criticism be made of anti-gay attitudes among comrades;
3. that gay people who hold ideological, political and organizational unity with a communist organization be allowed membership;
4. that the democratic rights of gay people be firmly upheld and struggled for by communists;
5. that evidence of anti-gay attitudes among the working class be struggled with by showing whose interests such prejudices actually serve.”
Paul Saba has encouraged Kasama to post the following document — a critique of anti-gay positions within the revolutionary movement, written by a collective of Maoist lesbians in 1975.
What stands out in reading this analysis is that it targets and convincingly refutes arguments that still lingered (inexplicably and shamefully) for almost 30 more years.
After reading this, no one can say that the error of anti-gay bigotry was unknowable at that time — because it was laid out here quite clearly, in a document that was widely circulated. No one can say that inherited communist thinking made it impossible to break with anti-gay bigotry — because here its refutation is conducted on the basis of careful Maoist investigation and methodology.
This critique includes (as an appendix) the document of the Revolutionary Union that they are refuting.
We have been excavating the mistreatment of gay people within the revolutionary movement. Every day, we receive new information, suggestions, personal testimony and documents.
After publishing Libri Devrim’s “My Life in a Red Closet” we have received several accounts of the suppression of gay people within the revolutionary movement. Here is our fourth one.
Each recollection has added detail — but also confirmed a pattern where gay people were identified, isolated, confronted with the RCP’s position, pressured to reject their same sex attractions, and then often just shunned. As this account notes, there apparently a worked-out routine here, carried out after supporters have been sequestered and wrapped in a concealing cloud of invented security concerns.
* * * * * * * * *
by Alessa Hill
I wasn’t of the same generation as either Andrew or Libri, but in some ways I had a very similar experience.
I am heterosexual and was a member of the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade (RCYB) for three years. During that time I saw eager young people who were active and interested in politics become enthusiastic about what was in the pages of the Revolutionary Worker and would want to be involved in building the party. More than a handful, including one of my close friends, were GLBTQ. Some were actively discouraged from seeking to be anything more than “supporters” while others were active up until they heard the party’s line on homosexuality and then they left in disgust.
Kasama has received the following recollection. We are attempting to excavate and understand a hidden and denied history within our previous communist movement.
“The point of contention for me was with the accusation that I was my love for Mark (and possible future love for another man) was a concentrated expression of misogyny that stood as an obstacle to the emancipation of women. I never understood that argument with its twisted logic.
“My love for Mark was just love. It had nothing to do with my feelings for women in general or my commitment to fighting sexism or the transformation to a new society. It was just love for someone who was a great guy who I sorely missed and wished every day was there with me.”
* * * * * * * * * *
by Andrew Copper
After reading Libri’s painful account of her time in the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade and the pressure that was placed on her to change her sexual orientation, I feel compelled to tell my own story.
I was active in the Revolutionary Union, the precursor to the Revolutionary Communist Party, as a college student and then, years later, with the RCP. During those intervening years I was out of touch with comrades from the RCP and so it was no surprise that they didn’t realize I had come out as a gay man and that I was living with male partner, Mark, who had first been my college roommate and then become my lover.
Mark’s sudden death in an accident in the late 1980s forced me to reconsider the direction my life had been taking. I had been so involved in the details of my life, my education and nascent career, and everything else in life, that I had stepped back from political activity (temporarily) and never returned.
The publication of “My Life in a Red Closet” has encouraged a number of other people to share their experiences. The following comes from a long time supporter of the RCP who describes experiences of questioning and opposing the anti-gay line.
by Gary
I feel so many emotions reading Libri’s piece.
First of all, compassion for someone so abused by supposed comrades. I can imagine the pain (and fear) inflicted at those coffee shop and Burger King meetings.
Secondly, anger at those inflicting the pain.
Third, puzzlement as to how people who think of themselves as “scientists” (or at any rate have in more recent times encouraged by Bob Avakian to see themselves as “scientists”) could be so STUPID as to regard homosexual attraction as a problem requiring this kind of interference into a member or supporter’s intimate life.
I knew the party was homophobic. And even while in the Brigade in the 70s I opposed the “line of homosexuality.” I did so quietly, partly because I thought it might raise questions about my own sexuality. (It now seems strange to me that I would have once cared about such things. Why should I have ever held back in expressing my views about homosexuality, fearing that I might be considered gay? These days if someone mistook me as gay, I’d see it as similar to misspelling my name or misidentifying my ethnicity. Not a big issue. Such has society evolved; you certainly see it in the youth.)
Anyway, this is the first I’ve heard about this kind of Revolutionary Communist Party POLICING of people’s sexuality.
“We’re not interested in being bedroom police,” the RCP used to say when (properly) attacked for their position of homosexuality. But here they were trying to do exactly that, expecting that Libri’s commitment to the cause of revolution and to principles of democratic centralism would cause her to abandon her desire for women and even, to the party’s relief, have some sex with men…
We recently published the personal story “My life in a red closet” about experiences within the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade (RCYB) with the methods of the RCP. There are of course other stories to tell. Here is one that appeared on The Cahokian about political experiences within several Trotskyist groups.
More on Left-Wing Homophobia:
My Story of Survival
by ish
When I was writing the other day about the “Forgotten Legacy of Left-Wing Homophobia” I kept wanting to add a coda about what was generally my own ultimately positive experience of finding a corner of the left that was pro-gay. It seemed too much to squeeze into that post, but in thinking about it all some more I remembered some forgotten details and am reminded that my own experience was actually a little more mixed.
I first became involved with the organized left when I was at college in Chicago. In 1976 I joined the “Spartacus Youth League” which was at the time the youth group of the Spartacist League. I had known I was gay since I was a small boy, but in those long-ago days before high school gay-straight alliances I kept it to myself. None of my friends seemed to be also gay, and when I got to college where there were a very small handful of openly gay students I was confused and uncertain about how to cross the threshold out of my closet.
This piece was very difficult for Libri to write. We applaud her courage and her continuing hope for the communist movement. Some things in our history make us celebrate. Others make us grieve.
“I want to talk about what it was like to be attracted to the dream of revolution – and then be told that my lesbian feelings were ideologically part of a corrupt and oppressive world order, and that I force myself to have sexual relationships with men in an effort to develop the sexual feelings I was told I was supposed to have, as part of being a revolutionary. “
“I was pushed into the closet as a price for being considered a revolutionary by those I respected. And this was doubly painful: I was forced to deny my own feelings in public self-criticism, and I was being trained to confront my continuing feelings as reactionary in the privacy of my own mind.”
by Libri Devrim
Much has been written about the Revolutionary Communist Party and its ban on gay people within its ranks. Some of us are familiar with the specific anti-gay rationalizations the RCP promoted for thirty years – including its notorious argument that same-sex attractions are a politically reactionary, personal-ideological choice.
But what was going on within the RCP was not just a stubborn and arrogant “error of line”– it was also an actual practice that had an impact on real people and real struggle. That is what I want to write about, including what it was like to live “in the closet” inside a communist organization.
I want to talk about what it was like to be attracted to the dream of revolution – and then be told that my lesbian feelings were ideologically part of a corrupt and oppressive world order, and that I force myself to have sexual relationships with men in an effort to develop the sexual feelings I was told I was supposed to have, as part of being a revolutionary. I want to talk about the way decent but incredibly ignorant communist comrades were instructed to correct me, my feelings, and my behaviors. And how, within a movement hoping to carry out liberation, the awful arguments and pressures of anti-gay bigotry were reproduced and enforced.
Beaming faces, celebration, courage and revolutionary politics — Queer the Night in Wellington, New Zealand. Thanks to Joel for suggesting this. Props to the activists of the Workers Party taking point.
This collage of disturbing images are intended to capture the feelings of the artist suffering from AIDS and the social oppression that accompanies the disease.
From Mexico’s La Jornada as part of a longer interview:
Carmen Lira Saade: Hace cinco décadas, y a causa de la homofobia, se marginó a los homosexuales en Cuba y a muchos se les envió a campos de trabajo militar-agrícola, acusándolos de contrarrevolucionarios.
Fidel Castro: Sí –recuerda–, fueron momentos de una gran injusticia, ¡una gran injusticia! –repite enfático–, la haya hecho quien sea. Si la hicimos nosotros, nosotros… Estoy tratando de delimitar mi responsabilidad en todo eso porque, desde luego, personalmente, yo no tengo ese tipo de prejuicios.
[NOTE: The reporter writes in the first person and uses dashes for some citations and quotation marks for others, making the interview difficult to follow at parts. Nevertheless I have tried to retain the punctuation used in the original Spanish-language article from La Jornada].
Even though there is nothing that shows he feels any discomfort, I do not think Fidel is going to like what I am about to say.
- Comandante, despite the enchantments of the Cuban Revolution, the acknowledgment of and solidarity with a great part of the intellectual universe, the great achievements of the people against the blockade, in short, everything – everything – went down the pipes as a result of the persecution against homosexuals in Cuba.
June 28, 1969: Turning Point in Gay Rights History
By Stephen Holden
“The average homosexual, if there be such, is promiscuous. He is not interested in, nor capable of, a lasting relationship like that of a heterosexual marriage.”
So declared Mike Wallace in authoritative voice-of-God tones in “The Homosexuals,” a tawdry, sensationalist 1966 “CBS Reports,” excerpted in Kate Davis and David Heilbroner’s valuable film, “Stonewall Uprising.” Funny how yesterday’s conventional wisdom can become today’s embarrassment.
The most thorough documentary exploration of the three days of unrest beginning June 28, 1969, when patrons of the Stonewall Inn, a seedy Mafia-operated gay bar in Greenwich Village, turned on the police after a routine raid, “Stonewall Uprising” methodically ticks off the forms of oppression visited on gays and lesbians in the days before the gay rights movement.
“Before Stonewall there was no such thing as coming out or being out,” says Eric Marcus, the author of “Making Gay History: The Half-Century Fight for Lesbian & Gay Equal Rights.” “People talk about being in and out now; there was no out, there was just in.”
At the time of the riots, homosexuality was illegal in every state except Illinois. Before the laws were changed, one commentator observes, gay bars offered the same kind of social haven for an oppressed minority as black churches in the South before the civil rights movement. Read the rest of this entry »
This year, 2010, marks the 41th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, a watershed moment in the history of the modern LGBTI-Q movement and, it must be argued, an important breakthrough in the history of the society itself.
Rowland is the instigator of the Speed of Dreams blog, where this piece first appeared under the title “The History and Legacy of the Stonewall Rebellion.”
by Rowland Keshena
The Stonewall Riots were a series of violent clashes between New York City cops and groups of gay and transgender people. It all began on the early morning of the 28th of June 1969, and proceeded to last for several days. The clashes became a watershed for the worldwide gay rights movement, never before had gay and transgender people moved and acted together in such large numbers to forcibly resist police harassment directed towards their community. My intent here is to tell the history of Stonewall, and to attempt to do justice to its legacy.
Thanks to Ian for writing this piece and submitting this to Kasama. His examination of Queer Liberation originally appeared on the New Zealand Workers Party website and was adapted from a talk he gave at their Marxism 2010 conference.
by Ian Anderson,
What does queer liberation mean?
This article aims to deal with this question utilising historical materialism, the mode of enquiry pioneered by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Historical materialism explores social relations, such as homosexual oppression, by explaining the productive forces that shape them. With a particular focus on New Zealand history, this analysis aims to sketch the material basis of modern queerness, attempts to control or suppress it, and the politics that have emerged from this contradiction.
To deal with queer liberation, we must first define ‘queer.’ This is a heavily contested term, used both as an insult and a chosen identity. Queer theorist David Halperin has this to say:
‘Queer is by definition whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant. There is nothing in particular to which it necessarily refers. It is an identity without an essence. ‘Queer’ then, demarcates not a positivity but a positionality vis-à-vis the normal.’
So, to simplify, queerness is defined not as a thing in-itself, but in opposition to normalcy, or attempts at control. Largely it refers to queerness of sexuality, gender or orientation. The question for Marxists then becomes, how are queer identities defined and formed? What is their material basis?
To answer this question, we need to set up a theoretical framework and undertake a historical analysis. This analysis will rely particularly on the work of Antonio Gramsci and Michel Foucault, and draws on the notion of ‘historical specificity’ which Karl Korsch emphasised in the writings of Karl Marx. Historical specificity means that our analysis must be specific to historical conditions: so it’s not enough, for example, to claim that the National Party is conservative, we have to observe how they have changed and adapted historically.
“In reality, we are a mesh of working class, queer, gendered, differently abled and colored people. We don’t naturally have more allegiance to the queer segment of ourselves than the colored segment – we are all of it at once. We hate the white supremacist queers, as much as we disdain the ruling class people of color or labor bureaucracy who will readily sacrifice us for their own self interest. We also don’t naturally have more allegiance to the queer middle class than we do to the rank and file straight workers. Our self-conception is more complicated, and our liberations, more explosive.”
Queer Liberation is Class Struggle
Posted by JOMO
In the past two years, the issue of gay marriage has dominated the scene of queer struggles. Some of us are actively supportive, others, grudgingly supportive, and more others who rail that yet again, queer struggles are being monopolized by assimilationist, middle class versions of normality and family: “We are the same as you, except for in bed.”
Some supporters of gay marriage point to the economic benefits of marriage. Working class and poor queers need marriage to help alleviate their poverty; immigrant queers need marriage to get US citizenship. I agree. Yet, let’s not forget that many queers will never get married because of their suspicions of state institutions. Granting gay marriage doesn’t guarantee that immigrant spouses get visas or are free from ICE harassment. Also, around us we see families for whom marriage has not helped alleviate the race and class oppressions that they face everyday. While it may be true that gay marriage does benefit some immigrant couples, oftentimes this comes as an afterthought rather than a decisive theme of gay marriage struggles. It is undeniable that the struggle for gay marriage has been dominated by white, middle class queers who support the Democrats and are ashamed of those of us who don’t fit in their status quo.
One may see gay marriage as a reform to be won to open up space for more gains for queer liberation. Indeed, if gay marriage was simply a tactic within a broader strategy that integrated class, race and queer struggles, perhaps it wouldn’t cause so much anxiety among radical queer circles. In the absence of a broader strategy and vision however, all our hopes get pinned on this one struggle and the questions become stressful, burdensome and intense: Are we betraying our roots? Are we fighting for the society we envision through this struggle? Exactly what is this broader vision of queer liberation that gay marriage is a reform toward?
by Mike Ely
from 
